NDAMU SANDU IN ACCRA, GHANA
Zimbabwe’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are set to benefit from a US$6bn continental facility to jumpstart the sector as part of measures to ramp up intra-African trade.
The agreement to the facility was signed this week by AfCFTA Secretariat secretary general Wamkele Mene and United Bank for Africa (UBA) group deputy MD Muyiwa Akinyemi.
SMEs create over 470m jobs in Africa and contribute about 60% of GDP.
“Knowing that UBA has a presence in 20 African countries, we do have no presence collaboration as well. So we intend to leverage on non-presence collaboration to reach eligible SMEs where we have no presence. We are starting where we have presence and moving into geographies where we have no presence,” Akinyemi said.
The three year programme targets SMEs with a turnover of between 0 to US$2.5m per annum and they should be African entrepreneurs, he said.
Mene said the support would not only be in the countries where UBA are “because we are an organ of the African Union”.
“We cannot discriminate against this region or that region. All African countries that are state parties, those that have ratified the agreement have to benefit. There is no correlation between the commercial presence and where the support will be provided. The support will be provided to the extent that the criteria of the bank are met,” he said.
Mene said the SMEs should be drawn from four sectors—pharmaceutical, agriculture, automotive and transport and logistics—that present Africa with an opportunity to accelerate import substitution and the leading drivers for the continent’s industrial development and competitiveness.
In 2019, Africa imported US$16bn worth of pharmaceuticals which means the continent had forgo US$16bn worth of jobs and innovation, he said.
“Where we substitute these imports with AfCFTA trade and AfCFTA production, we will be creating jobs in Africa and we will be enabling competitiveness,” Mene said.
